Redditor Jasonp55 has a neat demonstration of the perils of confusing correlation with causation, and his well-chosen example makes this a potentially useful chart for discussing this issue with friends who won’t vaccinate themselves and their kids. /r/skeptic, I was practicing GraphPad and I think I may have discovered the ‘real’ cause of autism… (imgur.com) ( Thanks, Fipi Lele! )
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Correlation between autism diagnosis and organic food sales
An anonymous reader writes with an article from Duke Law on what would have entered the public domain today were it not for the copyright extensions enacted in 1978. From the article: “What could have been entering the public domain in the US on January 1, 2013? Under the law that existed until 1978, works from 1956. The films Godzilla, King of the Monsters!, The Best Things in Life Are Free, Forbidden Planet, The Ten Commandments, and Around the World in 80 Days; the stories 101 Dalmations and Phillip K. Dick’s The Minority Report; the songs ‘Que Sera, Sera’ and ‘Heartbreak Hotel’, and more. What is entering the public domain this year? Nothing.” And Rick Falkvinge shares his predictions for what the copyright monopoly will try this year. As a bit of a music fan, excessive copyright hits home often: the entire discographies of many artists I like have been out of print for at least a decade. Should copyright even be as long as in the pre-1978 law? Is the Berne Convention obsolete and in need of breaking to actually preserve cultural history? Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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What Could Have Been In the Public Domain Today, But Isn’t
ezabi writes “After announcing a 43 Million USD license agreement with Microsoft, the Egyptian government was faced with a protest from FOSS enthusiasts staging a stand before the cabinet http://www.egyptindependent.com/news/activists-protest-microsoft-deal Later, representatives from the community had a meeting with the minister of communications and information technology, such a meeting led to the ministry issuing a press release (in Arabic) stating its commitment to gradually move to open source (Google Translate to English) as a strategic option for future projects. It’s worth mentioning that all governmental websites used in the elections and constitution referendum were all based on open source solutions.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Egyptian Government To Adopt Free Software On Larger Scale
Upping its Web presence with high-level “ask me anything” sessions, the social news site racks in hundreds of millions of users and reveals its top 10 posts of 2012. [Read more]
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Reddit’s visitors skyrocket in 2012 with 37 billion page views
Whether or not you’re interested in videogames, this device is kind of fascinating from an industrial design/interface design point of view. The PhoneJoy Play is essentially a portable input device with a slick mechanical design: The two holdable halves can spread sideways, connected by a telescoping mechanism. Your smartphone or mini-tablet can then be “docked” in the middle, and the variety of buttons and motion pads interact with your device wirelessly. (more…)
Mac: You know what’s boring? The little “Verizon” or “AT&T” logo in the left-hand corner of your iPhone. You know what would be way more awesome? The Batman logo, or an image of Pac-Man chomping down on pellets. CarrierEditor lets you change your carrier logo to whatever you want, with no jailbreaking required. More »
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CarrierEditor Customizes Your iPhone’s Carrier Logo, No Jailbreak Required
Hackulous, the iOS piracy community behind the jailbreak app Installous, has suddenly shut down . Along with the community site, the Hackulous repository for the jailbreak store Cydia has also disappeared, rendering all of the community’s piracy tools dead. More »
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Pirated App Community Hackulous Suddenly Shuts Its Doors
An anonymous reader writes “YouTube has dropped 2 billion fake music industry views and their offending videos. From the article: ‘Google made good on its promise to weed out views inflated by artificial means last week, according to Daily Dot. Record company sites impacted included titans like Universal Music Group, which reportedly lost 1 billion of its 7 billion views, and Sony, who lost 850 million views. The cuts affected marquee names like Rhianna, Beyonce and Justin Bieber. YouTube said in a statement that the figures had been deliberately, artificially inflated. “This was not a bug or a security breach. This was an enforcement of our view count policy,” the company, which is owned by Google, wrote.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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YouTube Drops 2 Billion Fake Music Industry Views
These magnificently preserved socks date back to Roman Egypt, c. 250-420 A.D. Are they designed for two-toed people? Not quite: The big toe divided from the others suggest that the socks were probably meant to be worn with sandals. It is unclear whether the socks formed offerings to the dead or were used as foot coverings. Note that the holes have not laddered (though they have spread somewhat). Link -via Curious History | Photo: Victoria and Albert Museum
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Ancient Roman Socks
In 2002, over 2000 people between the ages of 51 and 80 were asked to sit on the floor using as little hand- or knee-support as possible. They were then asked to stand up without resorting to using their hands or knees if they were able. The results were recorded. By the end of October 2011, 159 subjects had died. It turns out that most of the people who died were the ones who needed the most support while performing the task. Only 2 of the 159 people who died had been able to sit down and stand up unsupported: “These differences persisted when results were controlled for age, gender and body mass index, suggesting that the sitting-rising test score is a significant predictor of all-cause mortality.” Test of musculo-skeletal fitness is ‘strong predictor’ of mortality in the middle-aged and older (Via Seth Robert’s Blog )
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Ability to sit and rise from the floor is closely correlated with all-cause mortality risk